“I was here when they brought him in the spring. Mute and blind, if you please.”
“Hsst! It’s almost winter! The levels make no difference to him! If he’s touched in the head, he’s like to an ox pulling in its traces. That would explain it. A mute beast.”
He walked, and he slept, and he ate, and walked and slept and ate, and again. And again.
Until the guards clattered down one turning and surrounded him, thrust a hapless, moaning prisoner into his place on the wheel, and hauled him up the ladders, up and farther up although it was no trouble to climb because he trudged so far every day, until a strange touch hissed against his skin and he swayed, dizzily, as air opened around him and they emerged from the workings.
So many smells! The perfume of earth made him reel. The scent of fallen leaves and the stink of forges dug into his lungs until he coughed. Sounds expanded, fading away into the heavens, which were unbound by stone walls.
There were too many noises to sort through: the hammer of picks breaking up rock; a man’s shout; a goat’s bleat; the susurrus of wind; feet grinding on loose rock and squeaking on damped down earth as a man halted before him.
Sour breath chased across his nostrils. The breeze carried the rich tang of horse manure.
“Here’s the one, Foucher.”
“Ai, Lord! What a stink! Best clean him up.”
“Do you think so? If we clean him up, no one will believe he’s survived below for so long. The duke won’t be impressed.”
“Umm. True enough. But the highborn won’t like the stench.”
“Nor will any man, low or high. I can scarce endure it.”
“True words. This creature is something rarely seen. We’ve got us a real prize here. He looks strong enough still.” The point of a stick prodded him in the chest, but no hands touched his body. “He might last months more on the wheel.”
“Years more!”
“Do you think so, Captain? Think you so? That would be a miracle!” Foucher snickered, enjoying this thought as another man might enjoy the sport of laughing, innocent children.
“You feed on our misery,” he said to Foucher.
Silence from his captors, fed by drawn-in breaths. “I thought he couldn’t talk!” exclaimed the Captain.
A switch whistled, snapped against his ear.
Pain exploded in his head, that had for so long now been a half-forgotten dull ache.
“So he shan’t!” said Foucher. “We’ll take him over quickly. Parade him before the duke and whip him if he speaks, then haul him back down below.” Foucher hissed hard between his teeth and the stick prodded him again, this time in the stomach, but its thrust barely penetrated the pain raging in his skull. “You’ll keep quiet, Silent, if you know what’s good for you!”
“Maybe this isn’t wise—” protested the Captain.
“Nay, I already told the duke we’d a fine strange sight for him, so he’s waiting. I hate to disappoint him.”
“Ai, indeed. He might do anything if we displease him. He’s that angry already that there isn’t more ore, nor did he like the sleeping conditions for the prisoners.”
“As if they deserve better!” The switch slapped against his buttocks. “Get on! Get on!”
He stumbled forward. As the pain throbbed with each jarring step, vision flashed on and out as a man might catch glimpses in a dark room when a candle was covered and uncovered.
He saw feet so grimy and mottled with a scaly growth that they didn’t seem human feet at all; then nothing, blinding darkness; then a swaying distant ocean of yellow and orange; then darkness; then the ocean again, but these were trees seen a long way away only it had been so long since he had seen trees painted with the colors of autumn that it had taken him this long to recognize them; then night as the clamor of the workings muted as they walked out beyond it; then mushrooms growing in sparse grass, only these weren’t mushrooms but pale tents and graceful awnings sagging and rising in the wind with brightly colored creatures laughing and chattering and walking out under the sun. A magnificent, broad-shouldered lord stood among them whose skin was dirty yet after all not dirty but burned a deep brown complexion like that of Liath. Beside him clung a frail, pallid woman with hair the color of wheat. Her belly was swollen with pregnancy. She and her noble husband turned to see the curiosity that the foreman of the mines had brought for their amusement.
He saw her face. She was repulsed by the grime but otherwise disinterested. Yet he recognized her.
“Tallia,” he said, the word like the throttling gasp of a man as a noose tightens around his neck. A nail burned in his empty hand.